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1%
1% '(sometimes called ''The 1%, or the One Percent, or One Percenters) are the top percentile of wealth-havingest families on the entire planet Earth, in other words; the über-rich. They are given the utmost respect and have their own systems of law and commerce separate from the lower peons. They are protected by the police above everyone else, and have the full backing of the military-industrial complex and the Shadow Government, whose leaders are also members of the 1%. Since Recession The top 10 percent of families own 75.3 percent of the nation's wealth. The bottom half of families own 1.1 percent of it. The families squished in between those two groups own 24.6 percent of the national wealth. Worldwide, the bottom half of the world’s people now own less than 1 percent of total wealth, and the wealthiest 10 percent have accumulated a staggering 87 percent of global assets. The top 1% has 48.2 percent of the world wealth. The “Global Annual Wealth Report" from Credit Suisse The global 1% has increased their wealth from $100 trillion to $127 trillion in just three years.Each and every year since the latest recession, America's richest 1% have made more than the cost of all U.S. Social programs combined. This is why both political parties complain that social security is too costly, because that would be even more money freed up for the 1%. For comparison, the budget for Social Security is around $860 billion, Medicare $524 billion, Medicaid $304 billion, and the entire safety net ($286 billion for SNAP, WIC Infants, Children, Child Nutrition, Earned Income Tax Credit, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and Housing). According to the US census bureau, median household income, adjusted for inflation, was $51,017 in 2012, broadly unchanged from 2011. Wages for the average household have fallen about 9% from an inflation-adjusted peak of $56,080 in 1999. The census figures show a sharp recovery for those at the top of the wage scale as those at the bottom continue to see falls. The average pay package of an S&P 500 CEO – the US's top 500 companies – last year was $13.7m. For those in charge of S&P small cap companies it was $3.5m. Much of the 1% wealth just sits there, not stimulating economic growth and simply accumulating more wealth. Depending on the estimate, the 1% took in anywhere from $2.3 trillion to $5.7 trillion per year. (All numeric analysis is detailed here.) Though national wealth has grown by an astonishing $30 trillion since the recession, most of it has gone to people who were already wealthy. In America(and much of the developed world)'s current system, massive amounts of wealth are routinely redistributed to the beneficiaries of a financial industry that has used cunning and money and power to impose their version of economic "freedom" while deregulating any policies that might have stopped the incessant transfer of wealth. Under this system, just two families (the Kochs and the Waltons), can take in a combined $6.6 Billion in national wealth in under two months. The lower half of America's population (160 million Americans, or 60 million households) own about as much wealth as the forty-three richest (though luckily that number is decreasing, as it was 47). based on the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook (GWD) 12,000 families around the country have been secretly pulling in $40 million to $60 million a year from their post-recession investments. If you are one of the peasants and you are upset by what seems like a level of income inequality indicative of an oligarchy, rest assured that America is not the worst offender. America is second worst in having the biggest distance between median American net worth and those at the top, with the worst country being those dirty communists in Russia. ''study from the Russell Sage Foundation '' This system is maintained in a democracy due to the fact that Americans are mostly ignorant of these gaps. For example, in 1965, for every dollar earned by the average worker, CEOs earned $20. By 2012, that gap mushroomed to 354 to one. When surveyed, Americans grossly underestimated this gap. Instead of 354 to 1, the Americans said it was only 30 to 1. When asked what the ideal pay gap should be, Americans say that a fair gap would be about 7 to 1. As engines of the economy, these wealthy investors use their high net worth in job-creating business startups (about 1% of their spending in North America in 2011). A recent study found that less than 1 percent of all entrepreneurs came from very rich or very poor backgrounds, and instead come from the middle class. But the corporate elite also stimulate the economy with stock buybacks that enrich the executives at the top even further, rather than wasting time on new technologies. In 1981, major corporations were spending less than 3 percent of their combined net income on buybacks, but in recent years they've been spending up to 95 percent of their profits on buybacks and dividends. Over 90% of the assets owned by millionaires are held in low-risk investments (bonds and cash), the stock market, and real estate. While average Americans pay up to a 10% sales tax on shoes for the kids, millionaire investors pay a ''zero sales tax''' on financial purchases. They pay just a .00002% SEC fee (2 cents for every thousand dollars) for a financial instrument. If you look at the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest people in America, there are more inherited fortunes in the upper ranks than there were decades ago, and more scions of the Walton family than entrepreneurs like Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg. Powers They have immense wealth powers, which really just equal power. They are also immune to incorruptibility, which means they are as corrupt ''as all hell. They utilize the power of lobbying to achieve most of their legislative goals by proxy, which is a nice way of saying they bribe the hell out of it. Philosophy Formed by the greatest minds of the Twentieth Century; Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan, Alan Greenspan, and Donald Trump. Selfishness Scroogery "Free Markets" Right now, there are 10 giant corporations that control, either directly or indirectly, virtually everything we buy; Kraft, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestle, Proctor and Gamble, General Mills, Kellogg's, Mars, Unilever, and Johnson & Johnson. These 10 in turn own, market, or distribute what people think of as the products of hundreds of other companies. This is the free market at work, and many of these corporations are inter-locked and connected themselves. For example, PepsiCo has a board member who serves on the board of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation alongside a board member of the Kellogg Company, and Johnson & Johnson has a board member who serves on the board of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation with a board member of Coca-Cola. Even more of these connections are not a matter of public record, which is what allows this version of a free market to exist in our democracy. In America's primitive days, unhealthy regulations like the Sherman Ant-Trust Act of 1890 prevented businesses from overwhelming competition in the marketplace, and even required the federal government to investigate any company that tried to monopolize an industry. Luckily, Ronald Reagan rode in and put an end to that socialist garbage so that local convenience and hardware stores could be more efficiently replaced by megastores like Wal-Mart and Target, while local diners and burger joints were replaced by Burger King and McDonalds. God Bless America. Politics Neither political party will do anything about this, as they are almost entirely made up of the top 1%. Rigging Tax Avoision Boeing, Ford, Chevron, Citigroup, Verizon, JP Morgan, and General Motors had a combined income last year of $74 billion, and paid no taxes (and in fact receive a combined refund of nearly $2 billion). The unpaid taxes would amount to about $26 billion, meaning these patriots bravely prevented universal Pre-K education for every 4-year old in America. Corporate Personhood Corporate Welfare Psychology Empathy Mutation Hoarding Affluenza Habitats Of The Rich and Famous Earth (commodity resources) Consumer Care Category:Morally Ambiguous Figures Category:Douchey Awesomes Category:Most Powerful Character